There's probably a chance the Raptors will retire Vince's jersey, though the parting was a little acrimonious, and they haven't shied away from giving out #15 to other players in the years since. He was the team's first true superstar player though, so it would only be appropriate.

If they're significant enough to the franchise, why not? The Grizzlies are one of the youngest franchises in the league, and least storied. In the past decade or so, they've enjoyed their first real period of relevance, and players like Allen and Randolph were significant contributors to the team's success and identity.

That may have been in response to benji's mention of the Heat retiring Bosh's.

That said, being one of the younger and less stories franchises they ought not to have as many retired jerseys either. It might seem fitting now, but 20-30 years down the track are they still as significant?

Clippers suck so I don't see anyone getting g their number retired unless Blake and Deandre stay on the team for the rest of their careers. Even then the team could suck the whole time and it could be like an Eric piatkowski situation

koberulz wrote:That may have been in response to benji's mention of the Heat retiring Bosh's.

That said, being one of the younger and less stories franchises they ought not to have as many retired jerseys either. It might seem fitting now, but 20-30 years down the track are they still as significant?

true that. the bulls only had Sloan jersey hanging in the rafters for almost 30 years before they decided to hang another one

During opening introductions, Jordan Bell made curious gestures with his hands, which he admitted after the game were meant to symbolize rubbing money together. "I wanted to see how cash considerations was doing over there," Bell said.

Perhaps opinion will change through the years, especially if the Grizzlies go on to enjoy a far more successful era and have more significant players spend a bulk of their career in Memphis. The context and reasoning will remain unchanged, though. They're significant players from the first extended period of success in the history of the franchise, so they'll be among the first to have their jersey numbers retired by the team.

If you look at some of the players who have had their jerseys retired by other teams, it's not unprecedented. A lot of players from the Celtics' Dynasty in the 60s have their jerseys retired, and while many of them are no-brainers, a couple are iffy. Don Nelson's #19 is retired and he's not in the Hall of Fame (as a player), while Satch Sanders (who is enshrined as a player despite Basketball Reference's metric placing him as an unlikely candidate) has his #16 retired. They were still significant in their own right to multiple Celtics championships, though they were certainly overshadowed by the great players they played with. Nevertheless, despite B-R's HoF metric and a lack of individual success compared to other honourees, the Celtics obviously felt it was an appropriate gesture.

Cherry-picking some other examples, there's Brad Davis in Dallas, Junior Bridgeman in Milwaukee, and Larry Steele in Portland. They each have some significance to their respective teams during the time they played, but none are all-time greats (and only Steele was part of a championship squad). With them in mind, the Grizzlies retiring Randolph and Allen's jerseys doesn't seem so strange. Then of course, you've also got cases such as Malik Sealy and Bobby Phills, who have their jersey numbers retired in light of their untimely passing. The Magic and the Kings both retired #6 in honour of their fans, referring to them as the Sixth Man.

I'd actually say Chicago is a good comparison here. During their first really noteworthy run, they had a bunch of first round exits and a couple of Conference Finals appearances, not unlike the Grizzlies in recent years. As such, Jerry Sloan and Bob Love, two of the standouts of that era, had their jersey numbers retired (Sloan in 1978, a couple of years after he retired, and Love in 1994, 17 years after he retired). By 1994, the Bulls had been around slightly longer than the Grizzlies have been now; they'd go on to retire MJ's #23 later in the year (and of course unretire it), while Pippen was obviously still active. The delay in retiring Love's #10 aside, with the first two numbers they retired, they did see fit to honour a couple of players who had been important to the team in its early years, and first era of relevance.

Just for fun, if you compare Tony Allen to Jerry Sloan and Zach Randolph to Bob Love, they have some similar career numbers (Per 36, in Allen and Sloan's case), as well as career accomplishments in terms of All-League team selections, appearances on the leaderboards, and so on. At the end of the day, it's not like the Grizzlies are retiring Acie Law's jersey or anything. Looking at some of the other numbers that have been retired, the only thing that's perhaps out of the norm is formally announcing their intentions while the players are still active and playing elsewhere.

I'm not saying it's unprecedented, merely that it looks out of place decades down the track. The one that always comes to mind for me is Scott Fenton's jersey in Perth. I fully understand why they retired it, but it looks incredibly out of place alongside Ellis, Crawford, Fisher, Vlahov, and Grace.

Not sure the Celtics are the best example either, I think they've retired half the available numbers.